Everyday gender biases and barriers remain a persistent problem in office culture. But men with a keen awareness of how women experience the workplace and how gender inequities torpedo profitability and mission outcomes can actively deploy strategies to overcome them. In the in-person work environment, these strategies include ensuring that women have a seat (and a nameplate) at the table; confronting other men when they make biased or sexist statements, including to women in team social events; and validating and normalizing women’s experiences in the moment. Men now have to adapt these strategies for the remote workplace.
Consider the obstacles working women are dealing with during the Covid-19 pandemic. Remote work has exacerbated previous gender inequities at home, which in turn has had ramifications in the workplace. Mothers are more likely to do most of the household labor, childcare, and home schooling, spending as much as 20 hours a week more compared to co-working fathers. Women report feeling they need to be “always on,” concerned that their job performance will be negatively evaluated, and unable to confide in colleagues about remote-work challenges. All of this leads to increased stress, burnout, job uncertainty, and financial insecurity. Of notable concern, one in four women are considering downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce altogether because of the strains that working remotely during the pandemic has put on them.
Given their added domestic burdens, and the persistent motherhood penalty for women with children, women currently face more headwinds than men in the workplace. For instance, because of demands from children and ambient noise at home, they have to mute themselves on video calls, making themselves appear less visible and less available. Because of gendered assumptions about their too burdened at home to consider a new stretch assignment or promotion, they can also be stymied in their career advancement.
World-class ally-ship at this moment requires an astute understanding of how and why women are uniquely affected in the remote environment, and the motivation to adapt key ally actions to the work-from-home world. Here are four strategies that male allies can deploy now to empower women and stem the loss of talented women from the workforce.
Include and sponsor women. Women in male-centric environments can experience belonging uncertainty even in normal work conditions. Many women receive subtle — or sometimes overt — signals that they are not part of the team, and that no one has their backs. Because women’s conceptions of themselves often are highly defined by interpersonal relationships, such exclusion experiences can cause loneliness and attrition from the workplace. Diminished face time during remote work may exacerbate this sense of isolation and create uncertainty about advancement opportunities among female colleagues.
Share your time generously with the women you work with. Reach out and inquire how they are faring in the remote-work situation. Invite conversation, check in often, and get back to them quickly when they reach out with questions or issues. Instead of an open-door policy, have an “open-phone/video-conference” policy, making it clear you’re available for impromptu conversations.
Be purposeful, too, in your sponsorship and advocacy. Recent research shows that only 23% of senior men are sponsoring women while in the remote-work environment. Even fewer are sponsoring women of color. With more women considering leaving the workforce, more men need to talk about the great work women are doing and the excellent results they are producing, to overtly reinforce their value to the organization.
Ensure women’s voices are heard in meetings. Be aware of the tendency for men to dominate conversations in virtual meetings, pitches to clients, formal presentations, and everyday discussions. Some women are socialized from an early age to hold back until there is a clear break in the conversation, which can be even more challenging in the remote-work environment. Others have been spoken over so often on a call or Zoom meeting that they’ve simply quit trying. In virtual meetings, we tend to reward the fastest and loudest participants (often men) and don’t deliberately make space for other voices.
Next time you are in a virtual meeting, look for an opportunity to toss the conversation over to a woman on your team and acknowledge her as an expert in a given topic: “Anyway, that’s my two cents, but Mary has way more experience in this area than I do. What do you think, Mary?” Or, notice when a talented woman hasn’t contributed to the conversation and ask her a specific question to pull her voice in: “I know Patrice has done work in this area before. I’d love to hear your thoughts, Patrice,” or “You always have such interesting perspectives on these questions, Tanya. I’m really curious what your take is.” Be authentic and say it because you mean it.
Practice transparency. Male allies pull back the curtain on information and processes that often are hidden from women. Because we communicate less during remote work, it’s easier for women, in particular, to miss important information and decisions that affect their jobs. During the pandemic, key business decisions to close or reopen physical offices and manufacturing facilities, changes to remote work policies, domestic and international travel plans, and knee-jerk paid leave policy changes have left employees feeling anxious and dissatisfied. The nature of remote work requires a deliberate communication plan to provide regular (and more frequent) updates on key business and personnel decisions, and the company’s status. When intel is less accessible to women, whether it concerns pay, benefits, flex-work arrangements, or promotion opportunities, this perpetuates gender inequities in the workplace. If such intel is being transmitted in private conversations, emails, and video gatherings, be sure to pass it along to women who are not on the invite list. More broadly, consider how this information could be discussed in open settings such as virtual town halls, Zoom meetings, virtual lunches, online fireside chats, and webinars.
Evenly distribute virtual office housework. Recent research shows that women volunteer for non-promotable tasks more than men and are far more likely to be directly asked to take them on. While some of the common office housework — getting the coffee or planning the social gathering — has evaporated, be attuned to who gets assigned committee work, note-taking, the planning and organizing of virtual events, tracking of administrative requirements, and the leading of employee-resource groups. Say something when office housework is regularly directed to a female colleague, or volunteer to do it yourself. Work to develop a fair and equitable approach to distributing mundane virtual meeting chores and annoying administrative duties that detract from more career-enhancing activities. Maybe, for both men and women, it’s a simple rotational schedule that fairly determines who takes notes, monitors time, or produces the next meeting agenda.
Also, encourage the women you work with to say “no” more often. Consider having a collegial conversation over a Zoom coffee break with women who seem to be raising their hand too often for virtual housework. Tell them what you’re noticing, talk about the career-progression ramifications, and encourage them to be selective and practice saying “no,” even if it feels uncomfortable. Then, have their backs when they decline one of these non-promotable “opportunities.”
Leaders and managers —and the majority of men in most industries — are at a crossroads. We must decide to take personal action to evolve and improve ally-ship behaviors in remote workplaces so that talented women are retained and advanced. Anything short of this commitment will undermine recent gains in gender diversity. To achieve gender equity as we continue to live through this pandemic, the first step is to cultivate an awareness and understanding of the unique remote-work challenges that women confront now on a daily basis.
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October 27, 2020 at 08:04PM
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